Night at the steam train depot in my hometown of Wernigerode in the Harz mountains.

I went back to my hometown in Germany over Christmas, and one place I always have to visit is the steam train depot there. The narrow gauge Harz Railway is one of the major tourist attractions in the region. To this day the Railway maintains a fleet of 6 steam locomotives and over 100km of tracks.

Steam engines at night, that's black and white photography almost out of the box!

People waiting for the train.

The picture below was taken at the train station on the summit of the Brocken. The Brocken is the highest mountain in the region, and weather conditions on the summit can be extreme. On the day this picture was taken, we had near arctic conditions on the summit, while there was no snow down in the valley.

Valley of the dead trees...

It looks like the forest in the national park Harz is slowly dying. Or, as the the park rangers say, the forest is changing. The old conifer mono cultures are left do die, over time, they'll be replaced by native broad leaved trees. That makes sense to me, it's just, the transition period isn't exactly pretty....